No Good Thing Ever Dies
by Jaded
Summary: "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best thing. And no good thing ever dies." Immediately post-"The Force Awakens," Luke, Leia, and Rey grapple with the legacy and meaning of family when they are reunited, and together, they seek out the redemption . . . or the destruction of Kylo Ren. Canon and non-canon blending.
1. Chapter 1

"Her name was Mara," he says.

Rey rakes her hand across her face, pulls her wind-swept hair back and tucks it behind her ear. His voice is soft, gravelly, as though he hasn't just been trying to find the words but the voice itself.

This is the first thing he has said to her since she arrived on this planet, but Rey is hardly surprised that this is what he chooses first to reveal. His every waking moment is spent before the gravestone where she first found him, this man who wanted to stay hidden but ran out of places to run.

"She was a Jedi."

But for as distant as he keeps himself physically from her, from everyone he once knew, what doesn't stay hidden is his grief. It hits her like a sonic boom everymorning, a grief folded upon itself, heavy as a mountain, infinite as a black hole. She is untrained in the use of the Force, but even though she cannot read it yet, she can still see the ripple of pain and despair radiating from him, see its gradation of shades that she understands on a certain level to be more than just about one person or one event. But that he opens up at all, it's a start. She will take it as she did the crumbs of food from Unkar Platt. They both are means to survival.

Luke Skywalker's head drops to his chest, and Rey sees his shoulders fall, his hands move toward the lightsaber she presented to him the moment she first knew it was him. A man, not a myth. And a very lonely man at that. Rey doesn't know why he ran nor what he was running from, nor does she know what keeps him here, but loneliness is one thing she understands, and so her heart hurts for him.

He holds out the lightsaber to show her, turning the metal hilt over with his hands. "This was hers, and mine before that." He pauses, a ghost of a smile touching his features, and Rey expects him to continue, but the words die on his lips, leaving her with yet another mystery.

She wonders at the history of this weapon. When she touched it back in Maz Kanata's, she had been bombarded by voices and images, but there had been no vision of a woman, no voice saying her name. If this had been this Mara Jade's, then where was she? What was her story? Why has her death broken the once great hero of the rebellion?

"Where did you find this?"

Rey takes a breath, considering her words. "It found me." She shakes his head. "I mean, I came upon it at Maz Katana's place. It was in a box. She said that it was yours and that she had been safekeeping it, and that it was calling to...to me. The Force," she says, "it was calling to me. And now it is calling me to you."

It seems a lifetime ago, but it's been what, two weeks? She still wakes up thinking she is at home in her AT-AT walker on Jakku and automatically stands up to shake the nonexistent sand from her clothes. And what has happened in that space of time could have filled her life in the long years before that. Meeting Han Solo only to watch him die. Meeting Finn, her first true friend, but leaving him before he could wake from his long sleep. The sound of the crashing waves has to bring her back each morning, it brings her back now. She reminds herself to be strong. She has been strong all her life and refuses to stop now.

Luke Skywalker considers her for a moment; she stares, listening to the pounding of blood in her ears.

"What is your name, girl?" he asks.

"Rey."

There is a ripple in the Force. And maybe it's the angle of the sun, the way the light reflects off the water or the stone, but she sees his eyes darken, she sees them suddenly filled with tears.

"Rey," he echos. His hands tighten around the lightsaber.

She touches her face to swipe at another loose tendril of hair; pulls her hand away to find her finger tips wet with her own tears. She steps toward him, afraid for a moment. Afraid that she will say the wrong thing, that he'll say no, that she'll have waited too long or asked too soon. "Will you come back?" she asks. "Will you come with me?"


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm so sorry," he says, his face crumpling the moment he sees her walk into the medbay. "I'm so sorry." Leia holds out her hand to this brave young man who she has only known for a few, brief moments, but she feels as though she knows him. His actions, his bravery, his heart, have shown her all she needs to know who he is at his core. That Han cared for him, trusted him-was all the stamp of approval she needed for his character.

"Finn," she starts, but becomes frozen in a thought: she can only speak now of Han in the past tense; _was, had, died_ , and she realizes that she had never considered that this day would ever come.

An oxygen tank hisses behind her. A creaky med-droid rolls into the room with a precious new shipment of bacta. And Leia holds her breath for a moment. The smell of hospitals and medbays had never sat well with her. She'd spent her life at war, one battle bleeding into the next. The only time she had not minded the smell was the day Ben had been born, but the soft, powdery smells of her son swaddled in the softest of blankets, nestled against the warmth of her skin, is tainted. When she thinks of him, she smells smoke and ash and blood as he vanished with Snoke.

"Has anyone filled you in?" she asks, pulling up a stool besides him, still holding his hand.

"Poe has, some. He said I've been here weeks. How is that possible?"

"In the First Order, if you had been hurt like this, would they have saved you?"

It answers his questions about the how, and he leans back, taking that in.

"We take care of our own, here."

His expression is awed, a little eager, a lot hopeful. He reminds her of Luke in some ways, when they first met long ago, before the darkness fell again and he, too, vanished from her life.

"General, about Han. . ."

"You should rest," she says, patting his arm before standing up. She leaves because there is work to do. There is always work to do. Starkiller base may have been destroyed, but she's lived through both Death Stars. She doesn't know what will come next, but she knows there will be a next thing, and the Resistance has to be prepared. But in the narrow, gray hallways, she allows herself just a moment to breathe out and then in, to hold onto the walls for support, before she continues on her way to the war room.

Leia focuses on her work because work is what she has. Her family is all gone, spread across the universe, ghosts and dust and nothing. A lesser person would have broken into a million pieces under the same pressure, but she is Leia Organa, she does not bow, she does not bend.

But she often wishes she could, that a luxury like that could exist in her life.

But it doesn't, so stands ramrod straight at the comm center and calls over to Lieutenant Connix, and asks for the latest updates on the bombing run at Carida.

"Any casualties?"she asks.

"All accounted for," Connix replies, in the first good news in days.

"Any sign from the Falcon?" Her voice hitches on the ship's name. It had been her second home once, back when she and Han had been first married, when he had upgraded the mess as a wedding gift to her and had ushered Chewie into the space to make them breakfast after she had asked who exactly did he imagine as the chef in this scenario. But what is home now when there is scarcely a glimmer of hope that there will ever be anyone to return to?

"No signs yet," Connix confirms.

But there is a shimmer in the Force. Even as untrained as she is-and that is a regret she has held hard in her heart since the day Ben disappeared-she senses something, someone, both familiar and now strange.

"Check again, Lieutenent!" she barks, moving toward the scanners.

The comm blinks suddenly comes alive and the sound of Wookie roar is heard throughout the control center, followed by the voice of a young woman confirming their arrival. And then there, a presence, clear as a bell. A vision in her mind begins to form, a fog lifting with the sunrise, and she says, to no one but herself, "Luke? Is that really you?"


End file.
